“I don’t feel it’s odd to just wake up one day and just be a different person.”
You wouldn’t lie to Zendaya, right? Every interview with Robert Pattinson is weirder and more revealing than the last, and the actor’s recent discussion with his The Drama co-star for Interview Magazine definitely takes the cake… until, of course, the next one.
This is the first interview that the two have done for the upcoming A24 film from director Kristoffer Borgli. Since it’s about the trials and tribulations of a newly engaged couple, it’s befitting that their first interview is with each other. At least, that’s what The Drama is about as far as we know. There’s been an ominous hush surrounding the dark twists and turns this film might take. In the Interview interview, however, Zendaya describes the film as “romantic dramedy?” News to me! I was not expecting to laugh.
Maybe I should have, given Zendaya and Pattinson’s capacity for charm and humor. One of my favorite things about this interview, which you really should read in full, is how Zendaya wants us to know that Pattinson is being funny. Tone doesn’t always come as intended in print interviews. Nor does a dry humor, or humour since we’re specifically talking about the British variety here. Pattinson’s droll demeanor + accent is certainly part of how he’s been able to get away with straight-up lying in interviews before. (Fun fact: The Drama actually lets him use his natural accent, which is randomly rare.)
“I went to therapy once and the therapist asked me if I was on drugs because they couldn’t understand what I was talking about,” Pattinson says in Interview after realizing that a rant he’d just completed, all about pushing against the perception that he was like Edward Cullen IRL after Twilight and his own fluctuating sense of identity, didn’t make sense. “I was like, ‘I’m trying my best.'”
Thanks to Zendaya’s framing, this actually isn’t the zaniest Pattinson interview. She points out that it’s hard to tell when he’s being serious, and that she and Tom Holland have discussed his sense of humor. But it’s still very funny. He starts the interview by saying he’s caffeinated and “ready to jam,” which is so millennial cringe (says a cringe millennial herself). But don’t tell him that. He self-labels as Gen Z, after all. He laments his own inability to be mysterious. “I’ve learned again and again that if you just don’t speak,” he says, “people are like, ‘Wow. You’re really intimidating,’ but I just can’t fucking maintain it.”
Pattinson complains a lot, actually. He also laments his ability to be as eloquent as an auteur director on a podcast. “I felt inspired by thinking that eloquence is a kind of classist act,” he argues. “I was like, there’s something honest about not being able to express yourself. It’s proletarian to not be able to say anything.” He claims that he can no longer knows anybody at parties. Pattinson says “I’m always knocking at the door like, ‘Hey, guys. Where the party at?’ And everyone just gets younger and younger.”
At the end of the day, it really is hearting to see Pattinson, who along with the equally renegade Kristen Stewart was put on such a specific Hollywood heartthrob path following the Twilight saga, continue to defy and surprise us in so many ways. Heartening might not be the right word. Invigorating? Reassuring? The point is, he’s a weirdo! He’s funny! Pattinson has too much personality for a Teen Beat Q&A. He’s working with interesting directors and making movies that defy description.
Zendaya, a former Disney kid, is effectively avoiding this path as well. It’s hard to glean a ton of information about the film from this interview. They definitely had a lot of fun prepping and making it. Pattinson actually wants to rewatch it. But what is the drama in The Drama? TBD! This hilarious back and forth honestly raises more questions than it answers. Even the photoshoot that accompanies the interview certainly has a psychosexual tone that the actors knew wouldn’t match their conversation as they were having it. “The theme was I don’t know,” Zendaya jokes.
